How Guild Care helps people with dementia and their carers

Did you know there are around 50,000 people in the south east living with dementia?

It is for this reason that it is vital for those people and their carers to have a place where they feel comfortable, safe and understood. Living well with dementia is an emotional journey that requires trust and a feelings-based approach.

Friendships can be made in a fun environment at Dementia Day Breaks

Guild Care has developed a range of innovative dementia services that emotionally connect people living with dementia. Guild Care dementia services recognise the importance of providing specialist care, which is why dementia services are one of the organisation’s core focuses.

One of these services is Dementia Day Breaks for people over 50 with a memory or cognitive impairment, or a diagnosis of dementia. This is a service designed to support and stimulate people with dementia that runs on Wednesdays, 9.30am to 3pm, at £65 per session, including transport to and from Linfield House, a two-course lunch, all activities and outings.

This service creates a friendly, comfortable and safe environment close to the centre of Worthing that offers therapeutic art and music activities, excursions such as walks to the Downs, trips to garden centres, or pub lunches with support staff, as well as hairdressing and assisted bathing facilities on site.

The high level of centre-based care includes a manager and three dementia-trained support workers who will also use their extensive knowledge in cognitive therapies to enable people to maintain memory function for as long as possible.

Wendy Langley, Dementia Day Breaks co-ordinator, said: “Those living with a dementia benefit from our outings service because they have often only just had the diagnosis or are not too far down their dementia journey.

“They are able to mix with others in the same situation. This leads to feeling less isolated. Great friendships can be made in a fun environment all while carers can have a much-needed day to themselves in the sound knowledge that their loved one is being cared for in a stimulating, safe and caring environment.”

Part of Guild Care’s Haviland House, a purpose-built home dedicated to dementia care, is the Bradbury Centre. This is a day centre with a unique, person-centred approach that allows those with dementia to continue to live well with dementia but also allow carers to find solace in the thought that their loved ones are in safe hands.

Maureen, whose husband Colin attends Bradbury, found she was not meeting people because she was a carer and losing friends to busy lives was just the way dementia affected other people’s lives.

She said: “I was so pleased and so lucky to find Guild Care. Guild Care means that Colin is looked after and I know that he is safe and happy.

“They do musical things, games, things to stimulate him; they give him a nice lunch. For me, the benefits are different, in that I can go back to being an individual person, I can go meet people, I can have lunch out, I can go shopping and that’s the freedom Guild Care has given me and I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

The centre is also home to the Butterfly Club, a service for people in either later-stage dementia or needing more support. These are people who should be in full-time care but whose family have their own reason decided to keep them living at home.

Pam Grey, session leader, said: “Our ethos is ‘being with the person rather than doing things with them’. I think this service is important to those involved because it gives carers the reassurance that the person is well cared for physically and mentally where possible.”

To find out more about dementia services at Guild Care, call the customer enquiries team on 01903 327327 or email enquiry@guildcare.org